Enough
by infamouslastwords
Summary: H/W slash. movie!plot canon!writing. "He motions to a painting. Upon the canvas a woman is readying herself to draw a bath. 'For example: She is as beautiful as women come. But, pray tell, what do you think was the motivation behind the painter's hand?.'"


**Enough**

**by **infamous_last_**words**

The noise starts—a malaria-ridden mosquito inside his ear canal buzzing. Dark hued alcohol swishes over ice in a clear tumbler as it reaches his skull. The woman in the sapphire necklace—nine steps, each odd step falling slightly shorter in stride. Conversation of the men in the corner, rapaciously disposing of their tonics and social niceties. The heavy back-and-forth swing of the grandfather clock near the lobby entrance sets into motion the monotone that swallows the stem of his brain. He's rendered motionless from its deafening tedium. Buzzing with information, a hive of superfluous knowledge. A mismatched thread color discontinuing halfway through the Parisian rug underfoot; so slight only the troubling inkling of something amiss alerts him to the mistake. The ghosts of five thousand footsteps in this small room with fifteen chairs and spindle-legged tables, alcohol and tobacco smoke tramp in from both directions through his stinging ears. They leave heavy tracks in thick dust. And still the incessant, drilling buzz—glasses clinking in cheers, coin money smacked to wooden counters in an exchange, the scratching-pen noise of moustache whiskers against starched handkerchiefs.

This impossible din overwhelms him. His insides scream for escape against the buttoned-up outside of his body, his clothing. Shaved, clean, the back of his ears washed and spotted with mild cologne, Holmes fits right in to this puzzle of a social whirlwind in the lounge and bar of the Grand Hotel. If only physically—but not even that any longer, as his blank stare across the room and quivering insides begin to unnerve quite a few. Whispered accusations from the white-haired woman two seats away to her male counterpart, a monocled man with a disapproving headshake. Tiny electric impulses ignite underneath his temples, pinprick flares of white-noise pain. A lone man enjoying a nightcap with suspicious, dropping eyes cannot manage to neither close nor unglue them from Holmes's strange disposition.

A delicate change in the environment causes Holmes to become awake on an acute level to the new attention paid to him by a particular set of eyes. They had been searching for him—their energy is frenzied, familiar. A sudden wave of liberty washes over him, informality. This attention keen upon him, he lifts his own sight from the floor in an arc that follows the peculiar feeling. Meets the eyes. And everything calms at once, a pacifying guillotine slicing through the atmosphere of the room. All noise fades save for one—a comfortingly low and sedating hum that renders Holmes's attention completely lost except for focusing on this fixating tremble.

The chair he's sitting in turns into another, one in their home, and he loses all track of time and space swallowed by the noise. The eyes still stare and he observes that as they grow so does his completely enraptured state. It is nighttime, and in these shaded hours of the morning he loses himself and surrenders. The eyes disappear as slim fingers harrow through the thick hair on his head, as a chaste kiss is placed on his skull. A pair of knees mediate his own and the trailed touches begin; the controlling, hardened brushes of skin something substantial and masculine. The eyes appear in front of him again and conceal a depth of truths—secrets—that cannot be spoken nor shared. His mouth is kissed by a pair of lips like steam coals. He feels inside him an ice-like feverishness palpitate.

"Watson," he speaks, and it hangs in the air of the room. His mouth is kissed again, then his neck. The clothing he agonizingly costumed himself with becomes half-unbuttoned and haphazard, all his efforts for naught. But, alas, he knew this naught and did not need reminding.

"Watson," he speaks again, through his breath hitches unconvincingly at the end. His collarbones are followed to his shoulders, cloth pushed from this bone roadmap to hang uselessly around the bends of his elbows. He slackens controlling notions and lays his head against the back of the chair, baring his neck to these grim affections, these necessities.

The man straddles his lap, fingers accustomed to the small niches of military firearms moving deftly for one purpose, riding him of his remaining clothing. As the rush of adrenaline beneath his surface begins to wake him, his brain allows itself to defrost. The necessities continue, enforcing the already-present pattern. This has happened before, with less intensity and far less pain prompting the actions. It is not unusual that the detective would seek recluse inside of his shell, almost to the point of catatonia. He had conditioned Watson to accept this behavior in normal circumstances without much reaction in consequence. But this depression reached deeper than the surface brushes caused by lapses in employment. Now Watson would acts and now, only now, does Holmes allow.

In the beginning private hand clasps on shoulders and shared looks in appropriate moments were enough. Those merely remedied lesser afflictions, though. As time dragged on the hurts deepened and despite Holmes's best attempts at forcing science and logic to overcome his amygdala's functioning, the prefrontal cortex could not control the most congruous human downfall—emotion.

The private looks turned into increasingly more private practices, intense studies in which Holmes learned to become infatuated with the doctor—what caused his every action? It was like following the trail of one of his most engrossing cases. They would lie in their shared bed and he would take Watson's hand in his own, pour his energies and deliberations in to each and every ridge of the fingerprints, the shallow valley of the palm and the small, hard hills of his knuckles. He would observe how the individual digits compared, were dissimilar, or how they meshed together with his own. Watson would oblige him with his silence and doll-like compliancy.

This adventure over Watson's body would be enough to distract Holmes momentarily. He would remark, 'Do you know how much your ribs resemble the gills of a fish? When you breathe your soundless heavy sighs it appears you are drowning in the air.' Or, 'If I blow on your clavicle after pressing my mouth to your skin, goose pimples break out across your arms and spine. These are elicited by the change in temperature of the saliva.' And, 'Those goose pimples disappear if I place my hand palm-down to your lumbar discs, shared skin to skin contact creating a homeostasis of our two differing temperatures.' He had paused. 'You become warm because of my heat, Watson.' To which the doctor would merely stare at him placidly in response, chin rested on his folded arms, and reply, 'Yes, Holmes,' from across the scattered pillows and tangled sheets.

Eventually Holmes felt well again. And when a new case prompted him to travel abroad, he left Watson in their den of physical pleasure, mental stimulus, and worldly lethargy—utterly alone.

Weeks passed and Holmes forgot about every crook and corner, action and reaction of Watson's body. The hunt overtook his mind. While working his case he met a woman by the name of Irene Adler—_the_ woman, as he soon came to know. And it was not love—but neither were his feelings for Watson.

The man rouses himself from Holmes's lap and turns. Like a second skin the shirt falls from his shoulders to the floor, betraying a sinewy back to soft candlelight. Hair mussed, he throws his mild gaze to Holmes and undoes the fastenings of his slacks.

Holmes tries to recollect the knowing he had assembled just a month ago about this man's unveiled body, but the wisps elude the far-reaching fingers of his memory. When Watson walks toward him he raises from the chair, cupping a not-so-familiar jaw as their opposing mouths meet again. The motions are subduing and edged in moments by Watson's teeth over tongue and lips, rough combative undertones. Once again, Holmes dictates with all intents to grasp these confounding recollections. To learn again and use this information to replace another's—to forget.

With one suitcase he had returned unannounced. Clean-shaven and with mild cologne dotted behind his ears he walked into the bedroom and began throwing heavy curtains open. Seventeen days had seemed like seventy to the small, cluttered room. From the rubble Watson emerged bedraggled and with barely a morsel of food past his lips for many days. 'Have you not left in weeks?' Holmes inquired, quite affronted by this role reversal. He went to the chest of drawers and began pulling garments from it to toss on top of his closed carpetbag. 'No matter. I'm only back for some clothing—I'll be staying in a hotel downtown.' To the unspoken 'How long?' he answered as an afterthought—'Indefinitely.'

Overcome, Watson had jumped to him, throwing a circle of arms around his middle. Holmes's alpine body stiffened considerably at the touch. 'Oh, tell me of your case before you depart, Holmes—do stay, at least one night; you've been away so long. Gladstone's surely missed you sorely…' He released the detective but before a reply could be given a woman appeared at the doorway. Exotic in her beauty, she was instantly interesting, yet smally suspicious. She was comparable to a deft jungle arrow tipped with poison and just as aptly stole the question right from Watson's throat.

'Who's this, Sherlock?'

Holmes had silently resumed packing his bag, conveniently glassing over Watson's unbelieving eyes.

'I live with Holmes,' the doctor challenged, feathers uncharacteristically ruffled. The woman looked around the room with a tinge of distaste at the corner of her mouth after acquiring the claim. She then turned her attention to her gloves, removing them finger by finger.

'Sherlock never mentioned a boarder before.'

Holmes sufficiently deflected Watson's thrown glance of outrage. He pulled another bag down from a high storage shelf in a back corner of the room and began to fill it with his small, necessary trinkets, unsure of what 'indefinitely' would require.

'I'm not a _boarder_,' Watson protested. 'Holmes and I are associates, and friends. We've worked on numerous cases together. Uncountable cases!'

The woman raised her eyebrow. 'If you two are such _associates_,' she began, 'where were you while he was in Morocco?'

The doctor's eyes were wild now, and Holmes did not know how to contain the military man's roused anger, he became enraged so rarely.

'Irene, darling, wait by the carriage?'

With the condescending glance of a woman who had won, she exited the room.

'Darling?!' Watson exploded as soon as she was out of sight. 'Holmes, how—?'

'Do stop acting so pathetically naïve, Watson,' Holmes bellowed, interrupting. His voice leveled as he hooked the fastenings of his bags shut. 'It is unbecoming.' The finality in the tone visibly shook not only his associate, but perhaps the very floor as well. Watson was astounded into silence.

'I'm off now, old dog.' No response. 'Take precaution.'

As he turned to exit with a carpetbag over each shoulder, Watson spoke up.

'Holmes,' trying. He did not stop his advance towards the door. Then, with a quivering breath there was a cry,

'Sherlock.'

He waited, underneath the frame of the door, the logic to exactly why he should not turn around breaking. Every fragmented piece stuck him. Inside, he bled.

Slowly, he raised his eyes to the doctor's. With hands around collarbones and walking stick falling to the floor, the man uttered;

'I_ hurt_.'

The careening emotion that swelled in response to those two words, those two eyes, only cemented Holmes's failed decision to himself. His glance swept across the floorboards in an arc with something similar to guilt shining in them, but he had left without looking back. Resolute.

That had been three days ago.

They move against the edge of the bed and lay on its surface. Holmes runs his fingers over the doctor's ribs underneath him, recalling gills and fish and drowning in the open air as his lips linger against the other's skin. Watson grips his upper arm tightly and in tandem they maneuver each pair of hipbones impossibly close to one another's. The protruding calcium structures bruise in the process, their mouths meeting with a renewed animalism at the ambivalence toward injury. Never before had their clashing been such a competition to prove—to prove. To prove what, exactly?

They grapple, but Watson's muscle prostrates Holmes's own height. Holmes is pinned and helpless, elbows peaking as his wrists are commanded by the strong curve of thumb to index finger. This specific anatomy is held like a firearm would be, Watson's hands brushing over the skin of his stomach and then his hip and then his thigh, lifting the latter extremity over a stout shoulder. His jaw clenches in resolution as whiskery kisses trail over the sensitive inside inner skin, determined to contain the mewls heatedly tumbling about in his chest. He shoves his face to his upper arm as the doctor licks two fingers, delving them intently inside. His bared cheek is kissed wetly, nuzzled. The fingers make an increasingly wild friction then give way to a more sufficient commodity. Holmes's breath is caught in his throat—this familiar feeling like nothing a woman could rouse ignites and burns him from the inside out. Watson groans, head dipping down as he begins making rhythmic circles with his hips. The heavy breathes he is taking against the hollow shell of Holmes's ear drive the detective into a sexual hysteria.

"Oh, God …" he exhales, a prayer, a wish, a most internal and innate need. "Oh, God, John …"

The grip on his wrists is tightened. He knows Watson cannot see the crooks of his elbows at this angle, which is why the question "Have you had your seven-percent solution recently?" comes as no surprise. He hisses "Yes," over his jaw's spasming need to unclench, to allow a moan of the most deep, sensational pleasure. "Yes, after I—she left."

Watson kisses the words from his mouth, staunching the futile sadness with his gesture. Just a dull ache left inside, Holmes finally lets the moan shake his chest, grappling for Watson's fingers to squeeze between his own. His back arches with the effort, alley-cat belly pressing against Watson's taunt abdomen. The doctor echoes his noise and they build off of each other, louder and louder. It becomes dizzying.

He rises with the motions and Watson collects his scant weight into the loop of his arms, sitting back on his heels. They kiss profoundly, wantonly. Holmes can't stand the lack of oxygen and throws his head back for a breath. Watson sucks wetly at his bared throat as he moans, pleads, "John …"

And then oblivion, the deep reaches of an oblivion farther down that where any amount of solution could take him, a more complete oblivion, a more lasting oblivion, an oblivion with John.

The doctor is staring at him when he comes to. A thumb rubs against his cheekbone. A kiss is offered, bending. Holmes receives it.

"I love you, Sherlock," says this he with much difficulty and a somberness that makes it seem these words will drag him to the grave. "I love you with more vehemence than I've ever loved anything in my existence. More than air, more than water, more than life itself." And he cannot seem to stop himself, closer to the crypt with each syllable. "Because you are. You're everything and the only thing I treasure, above all else. This feeling has been growing inside me and it cannot be extinguished." There is a moment of contemplation, and impulse wins out over reservation. The victory is a grim one, as the utterance is said with the finality of a declaration of death. "This feeling, I fear, will remain forever."

They share a gaze lasting longer than any naturally should. It is Watson who looks away first, and Holmes feels the disconnect as one would feel a strike hit home.

"I'm aware you're not a man of emotion. I do not blame you; it is simply your nature for your actions to be of the mind and not of the heart. Most likely you do not understand how such a thing can take a hold of me so completely." Watson gently withdraws himself from his position against Holmes. "But let it ring true—I, too, understand science, if only from a medical perspective. And emotion is as real as the lines pressed in your textbooks, Sherlock. It is the only thing that governs the mind as well as the body. No matter how fruitlessly you pine to extinguish its effect upon you." He motions to a painting on the wall, a commission for the successful solving of one of Holmes's numerous cases. Upon the canvas a woman is readying herself to draw a bath—the water spills over the hem of her gauzy underclothing, over her ankles and feet. "Take her, for example. She is fair, as beautiful as women come. But, pray tell, what do you think was the motivation behind her conception by the painter's hand?" He lets the question hang in the air, and this is one inquiry that Holmes does not jump to answer. He knows the solution, yet he does not dare speak it. "Love," Watson finally murmurs. "He restlessly labored over her every detail, conjuring from his mind the ideal imagining of a woman. Her beauty surely isn't present in the realm of our reality—no, those eyes are too knowing, that skin far too faultless. He created her in the image of his own desires, and I would go as far to say he berated himself endlessly while completing the task at hand. After all, who could dare let themselves fall in love with a woman who does not exist? A woman who will never be matched in beauty, or in the infinite mystery behind those eyes? Such a woman so complex as how he imagined her to be does not live, and never will. Do you understand, Sherlock?" His eyes flash back to Holmes's. "I performed the autopsy on this painter. He drowned himself in his very bath. He could not stand the thought his woman would never exist. That he could never kiss her, smell her, touch her. But that conclusion was not the death of him, no. It was his dormant emotion that betrayed his mind into committing the act; the act of both painting the woman, and of snuffing himself." Suddenly he grabs Holmes's arm and bares the inside crook to the air. "Do you see what unaccepted emotion can do to someone?!"

Holmes can only sit in shock. Watson's breathing is labored, his eyebrows knit with determination. Unable to contain himself he stands and paces briskly across the carpet—Holmes does not follow with his eyes, can only stare uncomprehendingly into the downward air. With violent gestures Watson rounds on him again, shouts;

"It makes no sense you try only to act with your mind, when in fact your heart is the sovereign of your reason!"

Only a moment passes, but it is weighted in profound importance. Then Holmes watches as the doctor crumples to the floor in frustration, all anger giving way to immense sadness. Watson's face is buried in hiding hands, broken shoulders heaving with silent sobs. The very vision of it, a strong military man made to crouch before the hearth in nothing but his skin and bones, all defenses down and all lucidness dashed, is distressing beyond words.

Something outside of Holmes's realm of experience fuels him to move. Silently he bows near his friend, the doctor, and waits. Waits until shoulders still, a head draws itself upward, until the last tear rolls down a cheek and evaporates. Eyes betray themselves with red rims and despondency but are shallow and flattened from their aggravated puffiness and depraved anguish of a few moments ago as they stare into the hearth unblinkingly. Holmes thinks about ideal beauty as he watches Watson's face against the glowing fire, outline of his profile golden and illuminated.

"We cannot ever be, can we?"

The question is murmured from Watson's lips to himself, his sodden voice distant and morose. His back is splayed out in the shadows, sinewy and open and facing Holmes. The familiar rush of wanting to piece together a puzzle overcomes him as he stares at that canvas of skin. He arrests both shoulders after slipping closer, and presses his mouth to the clavicle that made itself so appealing. He withdraws, blows air across the wet patch, and watches as goose pimples spread out from the epicenter of the stimulus. Watson shivers, but suddenly Holmes cannot carry on. Slowly, his chin falls to his breastbone and his hands slip from shoulders.

"She left me," says he. "She stole from me." A pause. "She's not coming back."

They sit in silence. The sound of nothing consumes him, so far so that he almost doesn't realize the tenderness with which Watson maneuvers his hand to the lower back in front of him. Goose pimples sink into a smooth plane of skin with the application of heat. Watson sighs heavily, his ribs stark, leaning his head back to rest on Holmes's collarbone.

"I feel warm."

Holmes murmurs, "Comfortably warm, I hope?"

The doctor moves the two hands so the arms connected criss-cross across his chest. Holmes watches a small, melancholy smile turn up one corner of his friend's mouth.

"Yes," he says. "It is enough."


End file.
